Rodrigo Amado / Kent Kessler / Paal Nilssen-Love - Teatro

Rodrigo Amado: tenor & baritone saxophone
Kent Kessler: double bass
Paal Nilssen-Love: drums

The Portugese saxophonist Rodrigo Amado seems to replace Ken Vandermark in this trio with Kent Kessler on bass and Paal Nilssen-Love on drums. Vandermark played often enough with both of them in all possible line-ups and group configurations. Amado is also the sax-player in The Lisbon Improvisation Players, a Portuguese jazz band, with which Denis Gonzalez also made several performances. Amado is a different sax player than Vandermark, a little softer, more searching, more melodious, a little less energetic (but who isn't). The power of this band is that they create music, varying between hesitating and intense, calming each other, encouraging each other, propulsing each other to peaks, but without losing the focus, and with sufficient variation in the way they play their instruments to keep things fresh and exciting, even on the two longer pieces. The second of those, Pandora's Box, starts slow and searching, yet evolves into a rhythmic party full of intensity and musical joy, a piece in which both Kessler and Nilssen-Love get ample space for soloing. On the title song Kessler plays arco, Amado his baritone sax, and together they start the most abstract piece of the album, with the drums adding light touches and accents. This is no blowing fest, but very restrained, elegant and relatively accessible free jazz by three exceptional musicians. Highly recommended. (from FreeJazz)

2006 TEATRO (European Echoes) rapidshare/mediafire

Rodrigo Amado / Kent Kessler / Paal Nilssen-Love - The Abstract Truth

Rodrigo Amado: tenor & baritone saxophones
Kent Kessler: doublebass
Paal Nilssen-Love: drums

It is not entirely clear to me what the title of "The Abstract Truth" refers to: a philosophical discussion on the nature of our thinking and knowledge of reality or a reference to Oliver Nelson's classic "The Blues And The Abstract Truth", with an implicit message that there is no blues to be found here? Why leave the blues away otherwise?

To be frank, I wouldn't know. What I do know is that the music is good, and soulful, bluesy even. And it is dedicated to Italian painter Giorgio De Chirico, a surrealist who is known for his deep perspectives, the use of classical mythological iconography, and static cityscapes. But again, the link to the music itself is not always apparent.

The trio consists of Rodrigo Amado on tenor and baritone, Kent Kessler on bass, Paal Nilssen-Love on drums, and after "Teatro", it is the second album of the trio. All eight tracks are freely improvised pieces, yet with a focused logic of their own. Amado is a great saxophonist, not necessarily in the traditional technical sense, but certainly in the musical sense: he can make his instrument sing, speak, tell a story, full of passion and emotion, yet equally full of surprise. The music holds the middle between expansiveness and intimacy, a rare quality and one that is also to be found in Amado's photography : a nice sense of contrast, clarity in the execution, broad themes, yet looked at from a very finite and unique human perspective. And a warm human perspective. Kessler and Nilssen-Love are excellent partners for his music, as usual rich in ideas, and also sensitive in the playing, only listen to the first track "Intro/The Red Tower" : a little capsule of their musical universe, with the arco bass building the tension, abstract sax phrases arise, the drums subtly creating a thundering backdrop and the sax gently and warm-toned introducing the tempo, with the drums picking up the rhythm and the bass switching to a boppish vamp, then the tempo changes again, slowing down, becoming bluesy. A little less than five minutes, but quite wealthy. And well, so is the rest of the album. Very much in the same style as their first album, yet slightly better on this album. Because the pieces are more compact: intimate expansiveness, grand in its finite limitations, universal in its all-too human reality. The blues and the abstract truth, dig? (from Free Jazz)

2009 THE ABSTRACT TRUTH (rapidshare/mediafire)

Joe McPhee, Peter Brötzmann, Kent Kessler, Michael Zerang - The Damage Is Done

Joe McPhee: trumpet, alto saxophone
Peter Brötzmann: alto & tenor saxophones, tarogato, b-flat clarinet
Kent Kessler: bass
Michael Zerang: drums

This live date features legendary free jazz pioneers Peter Brotzmann and Joe McPhee, and Chicago's leading rhythm section, bassist Kent Kessler and drummer Michael Zerang. The four also make up 4/10 of Brötzmann's Chicago Tentet, maybe the most successful large new music jazz ensemble ever assembled.

As they have in the past while touring with the Tentet, they step away and perform in this more intimate lineup. This quartet has released two previous recordings, Tales Out Of Time (hatOLOGY, 2004) and Guts (Okka, 2007), with The Damage Is Done's two discs recorded live at Alchemia in Krakow, Poland in March of 2008.

While the players can (and do) perform volatile energy jazz here, their preference is for music that's dissectible enough for the players to be distinguished in parts and direction.

The obvious reference point here is the legend of Albert Ayler and his brother Donald. Brötzmann has never shied away from his admiration for free jazz's holy ghost. With Brötzmann on tenor and McPhee sporting the trumpet role, the attention to Ayler can be heard on "With Charon" and the title track (all 30-plus minutes). Brotzmann and McPhee's stamina, both nearing 70, is impressive. The pair delivers an onslaught of energy with a relentless attack, the only pause being for Zerang and Kessler's solos. With that, the pace slows, allowing Brötzmann to paint from a different palette. This gentler approach acts as a collection point before the music again spreads its energy patterns outward.

Kessler and Zerang open "Alchemia Souls," with itchy bowed bass and sound effect brushes on drums. Brötzmann enters, playing a persistent tarogato before McPhee's twitchy alto joins. The rhythm section maintains the energy through constant motion. The more affable music making here comes at the urging of the rhythm section. Slowing down the pulse or playing with mallets coaxes the horn players to decelerate and clarify the sound.

The breadth and power of these four players comes through with an exhaustive clarity in this crisp and vigorous live recording. (from ALLABOUTJAZZ)

2009 THE DAMAGE IS DONE (part1/part2)

AALY Trio & DKV Trio - Double or Nothing

AALY TRIO (left channel):
Mats Gustafsson: alto & tenor saxophones
Kjell Nordeson: drums
Ingebrigt Håker-Flaten: bass

DKV TRIO (right channel):
Ken Vandermark: Bb & bass clarinet, tenor saxophone
Kent Kessler: bass
Hamid Drake: drums

Double or Nothing documents a meeting that was bound to happen, as likeminded and closely connected as these groups are. The Swedish AALY and Chicago DKV are both fiery powerhouse trios with a penchant for covering Albert Ayler and Don Cherry when not playing tunes of their own. DKV member Ken Vandermark has also joined AALY on each of that group's four albums. The result is what fans would expect, but no more. With AALY heard in the left channel and DKV in the right, the album opens with a recording of Vandermark's "Left to Right," which predates the version found on AALY's 2000 release, I Wonder if I Was Screaming. This time around, it kicks off with a five-minute drum duo by Kjell Nordeson and Hamid Drake. The rest of the album consists of a particularly dynamic performance -- ranging from sparsely quiet to shredding -- of Ayler's "Angels," a Vandermark favorite, which leads without break into Cherry's "Awake Nu." Both Mats Gustafsson and DKV would separately revisit "Awake Nu" in the next couple of years; these versions can be heard on The Thing (Crazy Wisdom, 2001) and Trigonometry (Okkadisk, 2002). (AMG)

2002 DOUBLE OR NOTHING